


the serpent's tale has come undone

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Politics, Pre-War, Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), Rise of Voldemort, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: In 1968 Voldemort takes Bellatrix Black on as a prospective follower, an apprentice, and a lover, in that order.





	the serpent's tale has come undone

**Author's Note:**

> This immediately follows [all time is unredeemable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057996) and takes place a few years before [houses live and die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889717) and is a part of that backstory universe but should be readable on its own.
> 
> Detailed warnings: Voldemort POV in and of itself; casual references to murder; consensual torture with magic; brief non-graphic flashback to child sexual abuse.
> 
> Title from "Ice" by Sarah McLachlan.

When he met Bellatrix Black to evaluate her dueling abilities, he did not necessarily have high expectations.

He would have suspected Sirius Black of childish bragging in any situation. Because he had been in the eight-year-old heir's mind on the night that drew Bellatrix to his attention, he knew that Sirius had spent the entire dinner party dwelling on his cousin's fate, and whether his parents would kill her for her sister Andromeda's crimes. He had not been close enough to use Legilimancy on Sirius when he spoke of his cousin's talent, and he knew that it had been meant to get his own attention; therefore he anticipated it might have been an outright lie.

He had asked a few questions of Slughorn, who was always willing to have dinner with him for old times' sake. In the midst of a conversation steered carefully to the House of Black, he learned that Bellatrix had been an erratic student, with talent but the disregard for academics common of pureblood girls. It was a waste, Slughorn said, but one that was probably not salvageable when she had been failing classes since her second year at school. 

Still, he knew that the Blacks taught their children at home, and Bellatrix might have the sort of useful skills that would not help much in Hogwarts - a facility for Dark Arts or particularly quick reflexes. He would have preserved her life regardless in order to cultivate the young heir to the House of Black.

The practice duel rather exceeded his wildest hopes.

She was young - twenty or twenty-one, he thought. She was gaunt with weeks of ostensible serious illness, probably actually starvation and torture. She had caged him with Fiendfyre, kept it up and the heat contained for a full three minutes, and then put it out in an instant when he asked if she could. There was no damage to the drawing room.

He could have escaped the circle at any time, of course, but that wasn't the point. He didn't expect - didn't want - his followers to win against him. Bellatrix Black at twenty-one would probably be capable of drawing against Evan Rosier Sr, who was around twenty years older. In a few years, given training and a chance to try herself and actually succeed, she would probably surpass him without effort.

Without intervention, she wasn't likely to get that chance, although she would be allowed to continue to study by herself. If it had been one of her sisters, he might have ordered Rodolphus Lestrange to became infatuated and thereby removed the problem of her natal family. Unfortunately, Bellatrix was engaged to the eight year old heir and would be kept pristinely on a shelf until he came of age to marry. 

The family _might_ transfer the betrothal to her youngest sister if given an opportunity to marry a daughter to the notoriously unwed Lestrange heir. They also might become offended or concerned and restrict Bellatrix to the house. He decided to keep that plan in reserve as an option but not initiate it yet.

At the first meeting: "I understand that you had difficulties with your formal studies," he said, hands clasped behind his back, examining one of the tapestries hanging the drawing room. This one depicted a battle with a viking chief. He wondered which Black ancestress had embroidered the strikingly lifelike death throes, complete with expelled viscera. The Blacks were so charming as a family when they weren't in the way. "Do you believe it possible to work around them?"

Of course it would be possible, but he would find out if she knew what the problem was first.

"Yes, my lord," Bellatrix said after a moment. She was seated on the sofa; he had invited this, knowing she was still weak. "I... was distracted in school, and I had difficulty sleeping because I was occupied with family problems. My cousins were very young. I don't believe it should be a problem now. I've caught up on much of the relevant work since leaving school."

"Your cousins," he repeated, intrigued. He had not anticipated this, though perhaps he should have, seeing Sirius and Narcissa's distraught devotion at the dinner party. "Your aunt and your mother did not care for them?"

"Didn't bother to care for them - my lord," Bellatrix said, tone flat and angry until she remembered who she spoke to.

"They are lucky to have you," he said. "Then you do not believe you will have further problems?"

"No, my lord, although I - could be wrong."

Good that she admitted it. "Very well," he said. "Please listen closely. You will be more acquainted with the principles of the Dark Arts than many of my students first are, but there are some areas your family is not, forgive me, known for. I believe you would not have much experience with magic involving the human mind?"

In the silent drawing room, he heard Bellatrix inhale. "No, my lord," she said, and both her tone and her mind shone with eagerness.

Slughorn was an idiot, truly.

He visited her every few weeks, then every week, throughout the autumn. He was unsurprised to have to travel to her house at first. Pureblood families were all absurdly archaic, and the Blacks in particular notoriously conservative. Walburga Black, wife of the head of the house, wore a veil outside. Furthermore, recently having lost a daughter to elopement, they would feel the need to be stricter with the remaining two. 

It was a surprise that they allowed him to be alone with her at all. It was a greater surprise when Bellatrix met him one day on the steps, anxiously flipping a lacy scarf around her hair, and told him that the drawing room was occupied and she was permitted to travel if he would excuse the interruption in routine. After that she went with him to houses of others in their overlapping social circles - the Lestranges, the Rosiers, the Carrows, for example; or to safe houses, once her family grew accustomed to her leaving with him.

He formed an impression of Bellatrix over that autumn, the way he kept a mental image of each of his followers, as well as notable enemies and public persons he had met or researched. Bellatrix Black was perfect: the ideal pureblood witch, a precise microcosm of her society and family's ideals. She was intelligent and possessed the strong will required to master difficult magic and the power to put it to use. At the same time she was obedient to the point of total self-abnegation once she granted her submission at all. She was viciously cruel with an occasional flare of sadism towards those who made themselves enemies, but loyal to friends and allies and devoted to her family. She had no sense of individual preservation or worth, only knowledge of the value of the collective - the family - and her own worth to it. 

She would spent hours mastering the subtleties of the Cruciatus Curse, which was an easily cast blunt instrument in the hands of the inept, but so much more with those who mastered it entirely. Then she would drop everything, release the emotions that fueled and were fueled by the curse, and go off to read to a cousin who had had a nightmare or fix a skinned knee. She had not the slightest hesitation about going to her knees to kiss his robes, nor cracking the skull of a victim brought along to one of his houses for the purpose into a series of perfect concentric circles. She appreciated his sense of humor, even when it was directed at her.

She was perfect, which was why he was steadily more confused as to why Orion Black was slowly fracturing her into completely alienating herself from the family she was devoted to.

She would have been immeasurably useful to the Blacks as the lady of the family, had he exercised a modicum of care punishing the relatives she was closest to, forced one of the other adults in the house or _hired someone_ to care for her cousins so that she could pass her classes as a child, and given her occasional recognition for something other than her potential as the mother of his son's children ten years or so further into the future now. 

As it was, she hated her uncle; not passionately but passively, without the emotional engagement that might make the relationship salvageable. She saw her family as weakened and increasingly broken, the adults in the house as a danger to the children she could never quite master, and the family traditions as warped, succumbing to innovation where they were good and preserved where they should have been discarded.

Orion Black's idiocy would be _his_ prize, in this case. _He_ understood what he was seeing when he looked into Bellatrix Black's cool gray eyes and the mind beyond them. He would gratefully use what Orion Black had discarded or overlooked as essentially worthless; or at least, not worthy of his attention and maintenance.

He knew that pureblood men were often idiots about women, but sometimes the boundless capacity for it in otherwise intelligent ones surprised him.

He wasn't sure why he taught Bellatrix so much. Normally he would hold back, give his followers enough to keep them loyal and to allow them to best serve him, leave entire fields of knowledge blank. Normally, of course, his followers only had the aptitude for shreds of his knowledge anyway. He had begin with the intention to ensure that Bellatrix would be impressed, would believe him able to teach her more than her family could anyway. He had no reason at all to continue once he accomplished that, except that he knew she _could_ learn what he taught her; that he had long ago hoped for a true equal and never found one; that there was a particular look on her face when she absorbed some lesson that completely reordered her conception of magic, and each time it faded he wanted to see it again, and again. 

He began to think of her as not just a student and an eventual follower but as something like an apprentice, someone he was entirely sure could achieve mastery of the Dark Arts and the accompany courtesy title of lordship given time. He did not think of her as _more_ or _other_ than an apprentice until the December after they met.

The occasion was the wedding of Basil Flint to Catherine Gamp on December the twelfth. Neither family was particularly wealthy. The magical world was small, and sprawling pureblood families with property entailed to the line or name often had quite impressive lands, artifacts and architecture to accompany little cash spread between proliferating cousins. The Blacks' fortune was somewhat unusual. 

But as was typical for weddings, money had been scraped up, loans taken out and favors called in so that for one day the Flints would impress anyone as maintaining the splendor of the middle ages, that half-imaginary golden time when magic and the right to bear arms together had been quite enough to render any number of families luxuriously prosperous. It was an echo of a time before the Statute, before modernity.

He did not appreciate this, except insofar as the particular choices of flowering garlands, menu and officiant suggested things about the financial worth and political patronage web of the Flint family that might be worth knowing. Unfortunately he often did not have the knowledge to disentangle these things, as much as it rankled. He would ask Gaidic Lestrange later, although that rankled, too. Research could help him with magic. It could not grant him the effortless cultural upbringing he had to mimic constantly, something which nearly all of his followers possessed already.

Still, attending this sort of thing as a known Dark Lord was better than attending it as a brilliant but poor orphan had once been. In particular people did not usually make small talk with him; they eyed him from the side and turned away unless he got their attention. They also rarely took offense at antisocial behavior. He circled the edge of the reception, thinking that at least he might get some planning done. One advantage of the society circuit was that it put a number of the usual people in a room together frequently on excuses engineered painstakingly by others.

It was on his second turn about the edge of the hall that he spotted Bellatrix, and the evening unaccountably brightened.

He believed it was her first public excursion since the summer. She stood with her aunt, quiet as appropriate for a woman who was supposed to have spent half a year as an invalid. This was not a manner natural to or becoming of Bellatrix. She wore a deep green dress that he now could guess, based on his experience of her taste, had been chosen for her by her aunt, and her hair was gradually escaping a silver hairnet fastened with emerald combs. He did not usually note what women were wearing in much detail, but at the moment he thought it was useful supporting information for her posture; and when he circled around to see her face at a distance he confirmed that she appeared quite miserable.

He had meant to test his comparison of her with Evan Rosier Sr. outside his own head. This seemed a good a time as any; Evan was himself trying to escape conversation with Abraxas Malfoy, his twenty-years-younger wife Perpetua visibly nearly bored to tears. The Flints would not take offense - would not dare take offense - at a minor duel in the chamber off the main hall, as long as no significant damage was done to the furnishings.

He swept off to request the favor of Abraxas, who enjoyed others asking his opinion immensely, and Evan, who shot him a brief look of profound relief before suggesting his wife find her sister at the reception. His wife curtsied to her husband, then him himself, and mouthed 'thank you, my lord' when Abraxas' head was turned.

Then he went to retrieve Bellatrix from Walburga Black.

He discovered as he approached why Bellatrix was behaving. Walburga had their hands entwined and was digging her nails into Bellatrix's wrist and palm so hard she had actually drawn blood. Gaidic Lestrange, in fact, was gazing at the sight of those hands with profound and somewhat rude disbelief, while answering Walburga absentmindedly. Bellatrix had a particular look in her eyes that told him she was fantasizing about slaughtering half the room.

"Gaidic, Lady Orion Black," he said, entering the conversation and bowing his head to Walburga. "Miss Black. May I have the favor of pulling your niece away for a moment? There's someone I'd like her to meet..."

Bellatrix was extracted quickly. She waited until they had left Walburga's line of sight to wandlessly heal and clean her wrist.

"This is unusual even for her, my lord," she said in response to his look. "I think she's been bored without shepherding me and - instead of just Cissy, I mean. She's too well-behaved, there are no opportunities for punishment."

"I have never seen quite that expression on Gaidic's face," he remarked. "I think he was rather afraid she might kill and eat him if diverted from you."

"It's a reasonable concern," Bellatrix said. "And if I had to go that way I don't think I'd want the cannibal to be Aunt Walburga."

"Indeed. Indigestion is not a flattering eulogy. This way, Bellatrix. I would like you to duel Evan Rosier for me."

"Rosier?" Her eyebrows lifted and she smiled, faintly. "It would be a pleasure, my lord."

He rather enjoyed the follow through. Evan Rosier Sr. was usefully cruel and mindlessly loyal, but he thought little of women to the point of making irritating mistakes because of it. Lecturing him did no good; he didn't understand those mistakes well enough to fix them if he was merely told to stop. Perhaps Bellatrix setting fire to his dress robes and throwing him across the room through a tapestry and into the cold stone floor would.

He let Abraxas give his opinion to appease him over the removal from the party, noted Evan's furious flush and the way Bellatrix quietly enjoyed Abraxas' surprised, even-handed praise, and dismissed both men. Bellatrix lingered unbidden. There was no need to send her back; she didn't have business to do, and she wasn't concerned about husband hunting either, having been engaged since the age of twelve.

"You had a question, Bellatrix?" he asked, studying the displaced tapestry in case any repair was needed before the hosts saw.

"Yes, my lord," she said, given permission. "I didn't recognize one of the spells Rosier used. It missed me, but the incantation began with "Der-"."

"Ah. _Derige_ ," he said.

"Anglo-Saxon," Bellatrix said. "Meaning, 'I hurt'?'" The Blacks had always taught their children languages as well as Dark Arts.

"Yes. It's a pain curse, not seriously damaging, but incapacitating for the duration. Rather like the Cruciatus in some respects, but the mechanism is different. Cruciatus is personalized by intention and works via overstimulating the nervous system, while Derige causes muscle contraction. It typically requires more anatomical knowledge and precision to use successfully. You had a request?" He turned to her, concluding that no new harm had been done to the tapestry. Bellatrix had already fixed the scorch marks on the floor.

"I wondered if you would show it to me, my lord?" she said.

"Shall I call Rosier back?" he asked, amused by her. He would do it if she asked, too.

"I thought," Bellatrix said and stumbled. He raised an eyebrow. She was rarely shy about questions pertaining to her studies. She collected herself and said, "Would you use it on me, my lord?"

His thoughts ground to a screeching halt.

The word _why_ was on the tip of his tongue, or alternatively Pardon? in case he had misunderstood. He bypassed both queries, met her eyes and slipped into her mind instead; she could raise Occlumency shields but would willingly allow him past them without a struggle, and since he had absolutely no idea what she was trying to achieve with this the direct method of gathering information appealed.

The answer came to him painfully clearly: while Bellatrix was still relieved to have escaped her aunt, exhilarated by the duel, proud of her performance, faintly anxious about his reaction and dreading going home, the foremost emotion in her mind was arousal. She wanted him to curse her because she thought she would like it. Sexually.

It was not news to him that Bellatrix was attracted to him; he hardly could have studied her mind repeatedly for months and missed it. She wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last. Power attracted even as his face appeared less human. 

She at least had the dignity to ignore it - the appearance of nun-like chastity would have been ground in when she was a teenager, so she had plenty of practice - and let him get on with teaching her. She knew she was going to marry her cousin and he had expected the impossibility of any sort of dalliance to stop her from taking any action, combined with her general obedience.

It also was not news to him that masochism existed, but he had never encountered any form of it that appealed to him. He realized as he thought it that this, somehow, did, and that he had already decided to grant the request. Perhaps she would go back to the party after if it distressed her, and leave him to consider what she'd meant by it.

"At your request," he murmured. "You may wish to sit down first." She went to her knees unhesitatingly, and he flicked his wand up. " _Derige_."

Cruciatus required the right emotion; Derige focus on knowledge. He controlled the contractions sharply, keeping them small, watching her crumple forward to land on her side and jerk. Her right arm fell outstretched towards him. Its fingers twitched, and he released her, watching her gasp on the floor. Her hair net had come loose on the side, so her hair spilled out in widely spread ringlets. The firelight shone off them.

He might enter her mind again if he wished, but he had no desire to experience the aftermath of that particular curse secondhand, so he'd wait. "Regretting it?" he asked, mildly.

"No, my lord," she gasped. Sooner than he might have thought but not too much so, she pushed herself up. She did not stand; she settled back on her knees instead.

"No?" he asked mildly, and pushed into her mind again to find--

Total sincerity, absolutely no break in the arousal from earlier, and a faintly growing desire to ask him to do it again behind the shakiness of her recovery.

Well. Bellatrix Black never failed to entertain. The entire family was crazy.

He could see now why he had found the request attractive and in inverse of that knowledge, what had revolted him about sexual sadism before. Most masochists desired a controlled sort of pain and the enactment of one or more specific fantasies. It was in the end nothing terribly different from any other sexual desire, it was only that the sensations that aroused them were different. The sadist ended up performing requests for an audience. 

It wasn't exactly that this description did not apply to Bellatrix; but she applied to it the usual self-abnegation of Black women, and her typical passion and devotion. She wanted him to hurt her - to _want_ to hurt specifically her and enough to keep doing it - and she didn't care what damage it did to her. He had encountered that before, too, but judging by her response to _Derige_ Bellatrix Black might actually be able to follow through. 

"Bella," he said, and realized only after that this was the first time he had used the familiar address of her cousins. "I can't do it again until you've actually recovered, you know."

She flushed scarlet to the tips of her ears, and he paced towards her on the floor, slow. He could tell that she was afraid of what he meant to do. She also enjoyed the fear and accepted the potential for consequences she might not like. Normally, he mused, it took him years to break someone to the point of total acceptance of punishment. Bellatrix apparently had come that way.

"I could use something else," he suggested mildly, stopping in front of her.

Her eyes flickered. Pleasure shone pure and bright above the sexual arousal: she was ecstatic that he might want to torture her, the odd girl. "As you wish, my lord."

"Do _you_ wish?"

"Yes, my lord."

He cast the Cruciatus non-verbally. So much of the reaction to it was the mythos, and he did not think Bellatrix would be wholly unaffected by that. He wanted to see what she thought of the pain.

She folded in on herself, forehead nearly touching her knees, arms wrapped around her stomach as she shook. He lifted it quickly and watched her put a palm to the floor, bracing herself, then straighten. She met his eyes, nervously, and licked her lips. "Thank you, my lord," she whispered.

This was the point where he acknowledged at least to himself that he wanted her.

It was... rare. It wasn't that he didn't feel arousal, but his experience was that sexual relationships were more trouble than they were worth and most people utterly insufferable. For him to want someone specific was practically unheard of. He didn't like people, except insofar as he liked them as useful and well-honed tools, and one did not desire a sex toy in quite that sense.

Of course, he had liked Bellatrix for several months now, so perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised. She was well known to be beautiful, charismatic and alluringly out of reach. Half the men at the wedding reception wanted her. Wanting Bellatrix Black might be the most normal thing he had done in years.

Of course, the fact that the desire had stirred with her kneeling on the floor and panting from the Cruciatus Curse was somewhat less so.

He had not remotely planned for this. He had never considered that he might actually initiate any sort of relationship with Bellatrix, physical or otherwise. He studied that thought for whether there was a good reason behind it, but the only thing that came to him was that it had never occurred to him that it would appeal. And _that_ was because he had never honestly expected someone like her, in his acquaintance but not yet marked, bound or in his power, to kneel before him and ask him to hurt her; let alone ask him to use an unknown curse of uncertain severity as a demonstration on her. 

He had a sense that he could have used Cruciatus on her all night and she'd have kept asking him for more. Undoubtedly this novelty was precisely what had stirred a novel reaction in him. He found he wanted to follow it, and could not come up with a compelling reason to refrain. The situation might never come up again, for all he knew.

At the same time... He did not wish to damage her. She was too useful - his best duelist, a capable researcher with a grounding in areas of the Dark Arts even he did not know well from her family, with political knowledge to compliment and mirror Gaidic Lestrange's. Moreover, while he had no objection to rape, it did not appeal to him in and of itself. It was crude; it was boring. If drawn out, it was worse. It was idiotic to toy with someone over an extended period of time, hurt them and drive them to desperation with it, and then allow them intimate access to your body.

If he was going to do this he was going to have to make some allowances to avoid hurting her permanently by accident, particularly as Bellatrix seemed utterly unconcerned about the potential for it. He knew perfectly well the sort of emotional and mental damage even rigorously healed sexual abuse could do to a person. It would be extremely inconvenient to the plans he had begun to make if Bellatrix became erratically dysfunctional, unable to order and access her memories or lethargic and depressed. Also, her family would certainly notice and assume it was his fault.

He crouched next to her and gently placed two fingers on her cheek. It was the first time he had touched her directly.

"My lord?" Bellatrix whispered.

"Bella," he said. "I think you know what, exactly, you were hoping to entice me to."

"I - apologize if my request was impertinent, my lord." She was blushing again. It traveled down her neck; he saw it in the palms of her hands. That ridiculous hairnet was swinging from the comb over her right ear, hair mostly fallen out.

Well, that was simply enough fixed. He took the comb out, shook the remaining hair out of the bag, and set it down on the floor.

Undressing a pureblood woman, particularly of Bellatrix's social stature, was the sort of insult that could result in her father or husband killing a man and receiving no stricture whatever from the court. Cooperating might get the woman killed, too. Bellatrix had not so much as moved a muscle to object.

"I would be lying to say I had had any interest," he said, and felt her hope withering before he continued, "Before tonight. You are apparently a woman of very unusual tastes... Not everyone is aroused by the Cruciatus."

Bellatrix swallowed and whispered, "I am not everyone, my lord."

"Clearly not." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Near her temples, her hair was soaked in sweat; she was still trembling faintly from the aftermath of the two pain curses. "I need you to be capable, Bella. I need your strength as a duelist and your capacity for political guidance. I cannot have those if you are broken, and I think what you desire, here," he touched her forehead, "Is for me to break you."

She swallowed and did not answer; he could not think what words could possibly form a safe one, so it was likely a wise choice.

"I won't do that. But we may do other things. Bella, I need you to understand what I'm saying right now, and I believe you are rather whited out with fear. Should I back up a few paces?"

That woke her up. She shook her head faintly - not an answer, but rather as though she was clearing it. Her hair rustled. "No, my lord. I am - paying attention. You - think you would damage me if you gave me what I wanted."

"I think it is a possibility," he said. "Here are my terms. You will not touch me until I give you permission verbally at any given time." He disliked unexpected touch intensely. "You will not say anything to anyone of this until and unless I allow it." She would need that as much as him, or frankly rather more, given what her family would probably do. "I will never summon you specifically for this purpose, require you to make advances or accept mine, or require you to follow through or continue. You will be my commander first, my strategist second, and this will come after all other considerations. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord," she said. "I would be - not your concubine or your mistress, but your lover."

He had to enter her mind again to pick up the distinction she wanted to express. Legilimancy was endlessly useful for pureblood society. "Yes, Bella," he said when he was certain of it. "Lovers meet by mutual consent."

If he had imagined initiating a sexual relationship with Bellatrix Black, or virtually any other pureblood woman, he would have expected some offense at being categorized thus. A married pureblood woman might take lovers, but only the sort that could be dismissed at a whim. A man who intended any sort of authority or control was supposed to give them the sanction and status of marriage. It wasn't that Bellatrix could even have accepted or asked, but he would have thought she'd be offended by his implicit rejection of marriage.

There was a time when he had considered that very concept. He had known others of questionable background and some talent who had found places for themselves in magical society by virtue of marrying up. They tended to live their whole lives at the service and disposal of their in-laws, always aware of the potential to be cut off from the family purse strings or for a quick, mandated divorce. This did not appeal for a number of reasons.

Moreover... He had wanted family as a student, he remembered that; something to replace the loss that had occurred at and before his birth, someone to claim him, someone who would defend his interests and give him something to defend. He had the Death Eaters as the closest possible thing now. The demands marriage would have made on him would not be... tenable.

He dismissed this line of thought as having been irrelevant for decades.

It was not in his nature to ask permission unless dissembling, but after the conversation they had just finished he knew it was necessary or he would undo everything he had just put into place.

"May I continue?" he said.

"Please, my lord," Bella said, and closed her eyes.

He thought of telling her to stand and strip, but he found there was something cheap about the thought that repulsed him. Usually he enjoyed at least passingly the sight of pureblood scions of old houses who would have mocked Tom Riddle readily humiliating themselves before him, but a show of nudity seemed - petty, demeaning in a way unworthy of his apprentice. Anyway, there was a practicality to it: she probably needed more skilled assistance than he could provide to get back into the thing. 

Instead he stood, drawing her to her feet with his hands on hers, and led her to a bench set into the wall of the room. Here, he saw the quality of her obedience: she was not placid, her eyes sparked with fascination and her every move was alive, but she let him lead her as docilely as a well-trained dog. Well, she was well-trained, he knew it took years to produce that sort of effect, particularly in a girl as intelligent and naturally stubborn as Bellatrix.

With her seated again, he touched her hair first, drawing it back from her face in a loose, tangled mass that he found rather more attractive than any number of correct hairstyles he had seen on her. She watched him, pupils so wide that the gray had become only a rim around the black. She was taut with fear and anticipation and arousal. 

She had been fantasizing about this for some time, but he knew she had never expected to actually get it. He didn't even have to hurt her again to keep her in that fraught, tense place. Merely wondering what he would do, at what point he would turn on her and reveal it was a trap, was enough for her.

He drew up three layers of skirts to her lap and was grateful that the underwear underneath it unlaced more like drawers instead of unwrapping. Clothing could get unbearably complex and he had limited experience with pureblood women's. Bellatrix, almost to his surprise, made no attempt to touch him whatsoever. She only put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, muscles jumping at his touch. He had noticed some time ago that she had the unusual quality of actually listening and learning from what she was told.

When he finally touched her underneath the layers, her whole body jerked. She inhaled sharply, and shivered with very little touch. It had been a long time since he had done this - not since he was in school, in fact - and not all of the memories were pleasant; but she required little effort; she was responsive to virtually every movement.

"Ah," he said after a moment, finger pressed lightly on what he had barely expected to find. "I see you are either a virgin or accomplished with reconstructive spellwork."

Bellatrix flushed again. "The first, my lord," she murmured. He knew, still half cognizant of her surface thoughts, that she was telling the truth. 

At the same time there was a flicker of doubt in her mind. He caught a memory, hazy with the effort that had been made to fight it off and with age alone, of someone else's hand where his was now, a much younger Bellatrix who bit her lip and dropped her head back to endure, rather than anticipate... He had gone no further, whichever relative it had been, aware of the necessity of preserving her value in marriage...

If he had seen it in her head she would have, too, but it had only been a flicker and he sensed also her profound desire that he not have seen it, not acknowledge it. He waited until he was sure she was calm again, and then he knew what he would do.

"Are you concerned, still, about maintaining it?" he said, circling a finger, lightly. He didn't like the exposure or vulnerability of sex, the messiness. Few people would allow you to take care of everything with a wand. But conversing with Bellatrix, fully dressed himself and with most of her clothing on as well, was not a problem. He didn't need to expose anything - literally or metaphorically - unless he wanted to. He was completely in control of her and of the situation.

"No, my lord," Bellatrix said, eyes closed. "Sirius is nine. It will be a long time before anyone has any interest in asking... And I know the spells, anyway."

"I am certain you do," he said, and broke the seal, so to speak, on the eldest Black daughter with two fingers of his right hand.

The pain would be small, there largely because he had deliberately torn the skin instead of stretching it, but she jerked at it anyway, hips bucking and rustling her skirts. He knew she had enjoyed it - the pain, and also the defiance. Her uncle and father would both be furious. Actually, that amused him as well; let them waste her in every way, let them leave her to him.

Bellatrix orgasmed only a few minutes later. He judged her recovered enough; he flicked his wand again and cast _Derige_ a second time, holding it only briefly. He was profoundly entertained when it pushed her over the edge for a second time in about a minute.

He did nothing for himself, that time, requested nothing. He did not yet feel comfortable with the idea of her touching him, even with permission, and he suspected that this would better drive in his point, anyway. He had no particular fear of Bellatrix failing in obedience. He wanted her to believe that he would allow her to refuse him before she allowed him to do serious psychological damage. Given her society's norms, she would see the manual sex, the focus on her, as consideration only.

Anyway, there was a sort of amusement in it for him, to ruin her with only a hand. He might share the joke, but knowing her she'd already thought of it.


End file.
